Have developers given up on Survival Horror?

"So, where does Survival Horror go from here? Given the obvious commercial appeal of games like Call of Duty, it wouldn’t make business sense for developers to go back to the niche trappings of old, not when they can fill their pockets with the action-oriented approach titles are going lately. However, there’s still room for an authentic survival horror experience."

Exactly. You won't find any decent Triple A survival-horrors these days for that very reason - but fortunately the indie sphere and modders are coming up with some excellent horror experiences.

Amnesia, Cry Of Fear, Lone Survivor - it's looking more and more like the future of horror gaming lies in downloadable digital titles created by small, talented, independent teams. Fortunately, Kickstarter can also be a springboard for people with great ideas and skills to attract funding for these kinds of projects.

Another game changing its genre to action/shooter. The problem is that the videogame industry have become too big for its own good. Developing costs and marketing budgets have sky-rocketed and companies need to recover the costs in any way possible. This has led to focusing on the most popular genre only and abandoning other less popular genres. The rise of DLC is also one the ways to increase revenue from a single game. All of this in turn has resulted in low quality, dlc infested and unfinished shooters/games ready to be patched up on day one. Anyone who even tries to make something different regrets it and eventually turns toward the shooter genre for increased profitability. The best days of gaming lasted from mid 90s and until 2005 when gaming companies were small and were driven by passion, dreams and vision instead of costs, revenues and profits. Every developer made what he wanted to make and did not worry about the money. They were passionate about their creations and just wanted to make their dream games. Now developers are slaves of giant corporation management who either obey them or lose their jobs. Ever wonder why all the legendary game creators like Hironobu Sakaguchi, Nobuo Uemetsu, Shinji Mikami, Soraya Saga, Yasunori Mitsuda, Masato Kato and Yasuyuki Honne are living a life of obscurity?? They refused to bow down to the shareholders and management. That is the reason we do not get ground breaking games any more and just sequels after sequels and generic shooters. The best days were when gaming industry was small and less commercialized than today.

From the looks of current trends in the industry, most devs have only given up on the horror aspect of their titles. Though they have cranked up on the intensity of the survival aspect. It is a shame that some of the franchises that put survival horror on the map to begin with have sold out to modern times. Taking an easier action adventure movie like approach for accessible games to please the mainstream consumer.

Luckily we still have games like Nintendo Wii U entertainment system exclusive ZombiU, and the likes of the Dead Island franchise. Two games that keep the horror aspect mixed in with the survival factor. I wish other devs in the future look at those two offerings as an example for how to do things correctly.

remember back in the days when they used to make good quality horror games. It was a way for developers to show off the graphics. Silent Hill still blows my mind up till this date. you really can't go low budget on this despite the risk factors.

Shodan 74 is correct indie developers and to some extent modders are the ones bringing the survival horror genre back from the grave. For those interested in survival horror games why not vote for all those horror games showing up in Steam Greenlight like cry of fear, ENOLA,etc. Kick starter is a great way to bring back survival horror.

Devs like capcom seem to believe that "survival horror doesn't sell" when resident evil 2 sold around 6 and 1 half million copies on ps1 alone. So are they delusional beyond belief and generally cocaine sniffing crackheads without any sense of logic? Yes. Definitely. But have all devs given up on this genre? No. In fact the failure of resident evil 6 in low sales might just be the thing needed to revive the once great series.